An Intruder of the Heart
by Vescere Bracis Meis
Summary: Some ties can only be broken. Oneshot. Of those who sleep, and those who dream, and the inevitability of endings.


_An Intruder of the Heart_

The Opera House sleeps. The grand and gilded halls are silent as the long sleep of the empty-eyed dead, the veined marble cold to the touch and lifeless, needing the roar of the many-voiced crowd and the thrum of pulsing life and the gift, the sordid blood-gift of the rich and terrible music to become alive again. Backstage, the twisted corridors and winding passageways are unlit and strange in the darkness, threatening in the sudden fear of the unknown. And above the scuffed and endless stage, strung like colourless paper-chains across the empty air, casting their shadows into the gaping grin of the orchestra pit, the catwalks hang motionless.

Five stories down, and across the great and glassy waters of the lake, one light still shines, deep in the bowels of the Opera House.

Everyone knows that ghosts don't sleep.

This ghost leans back in his chair and steeples his long fingers thoughtfully, thinks of the sleeping ones far above him. They drift, unknowing, in that suspended void of the mind which has eluded him again tonight. He closes his eyes and exhales, tasting the familiar, bittersweet curve of her name on his tongue. _Christine. _He knows that she is asleep, just as he will know when she wakes. No doubt her oblivion is untroubled by nightmares – she sleeps, secure for tonight in dreams of her love, her golden-haired young prince who has won her heart with whispers of a fairytale ending and the memory of Scandinavian skies. The ghost hisses between his teeth.

He takes a deep breath, surprised by the flash of anger, and recreates her in the darkness behind his eyes, projecting her onto the blank screen of his eyelids. _Christine._ The name rolls as easily as ever from his tongue, but he catches it before it can escape, so that the only sound to emerge from slack lips is a sibilant hiss. Fevered images dance across his tired mind. Her face, relaxed and flushed with sleep, in one of those rare moments of quiet tenderness that he knows he has no place in. The pale delicacy of a hand resting upon the coverlet, threaded with faint veins and impossibly fragile. He sucks in a lungful of air, and the dull ache in his chest is back again. Ah. So it wasn't from the cold, then.

It was very cold on the roof. But then, he was used to the damp cold of the cellars, not the biting teeth of the wind which snatched at the rich fabric of his costume, creeping over his mask with sly fingers.

And yet. And yet. Because within the boiling maelstrom of furious emotion, despite all the blind rage and the mad jealousy the hurt the pain the deep _wound _of her rejection and the hatred, the surging bitter tide like saltwater pumping through his veins the desperate need to possess her and have for this once this one time something real and tangible that was not tainted by that possession…something else was tangled up with all that. Something that threaded through the raw agony of his confusion imperceptibly, with a quiet determination that baffled his tired mind. He could not discern the nature of it; it was elusive, and shied away from his probing. He had the fleeting thought that it was a beautiful thing, this small and startling intruder of the heart.

Oh, Christine. Know that he will pursue you, then – he will run you to earth mercilessly, because the passions which shake his skeletal frame will not rest until you are his, or else perish in the chase. Because he is a strange and lonely man, this tall ghost who has loved you with a strange obsession-love that borders on madness, and that love still worms its way through the soul, piercing the strong heart-wall with its pitiful longing.

But perhaps there is still hope for them, the slender girl-child and the masked ghost, one sleeping and one awake, two opposing poles thrust together and bound inextricably by something born out of a kindred loneliness, the capering dream of a mad god. The rosy chain stretches out between them, bridging the long distance with its delicate strands to curl filmy tendrils around their two hearts, unwinding silently in the warm dark. The red knots cannot be undone – some ties can only be broken, and such a breaking can only come at a terrible price. But it must be severed. For her freedom, and for his as well, though he will deny this until the bitter end. Or else both will drown, dragged down into the dark with the warped umbilical cord twisted around their necks, deep in the secretive womb of the Opera.

Already he has some inkling of how this will end, must end – as he sits here in the gloom, a tiny glittering splinter of certainty has crept into his mind. He knows it will end with tears, and pain, and blood. Happy endings were not made for monsters. He laughs hollowly, and wonders if this terrifying lucidity is only the beginning of the deep spiral down into insanity. The monster must be feared, and fought, and eventually killed.

Perhaps they will pity him, at the last, and they, unable to understand how hell and heaven can be one and the same thing, will call it a mercy, this death of his. He can sense it coming, like the shadow at the end of a long corridor where there is only one door, and he has no choice but to walk that lonely walk towards eternity. Because the monster knows his place, and understands that he will die in his monstrousness, because the hero must be allowed to be heroic. It is a simpler world than the intellectuals realise, and it comes in only two shades.

Hope. What use is hope to a monster? He exhales shakily in the gloom. Tears slide silently down sunken cheeks. And yet the heart's cry is a strong one; perhaps he will listen to it, at the last, and find the strength to be something extraordinary.


End file.
